Day Four

Sun, 05 Dec 2010

As the first week of the Cancun climate talks draws to a close, John Costenbader from IUCN’s Environmental Law Programme, noted a general feeling of disorientation, fragmentation and growing concern about the future of the UNFCCC process.

Photo: Borjana Pervan IUCN

Hurry up and wait could describe the complicated transportation and split side event-negotiation logistics of the conference as well as the splintered, stagnant negotiations and parallel climate change processes occurring outside the UNFCCC for much of 2010.

In another room, negotiations on a post-2012 agreement seem similarly stalled for the most part. Given its increasingly conservative landscape since last month’s mid-term congressional elections, the United States offers no imminent hope of ratifying an agreement under the Long-Term Cooperative Action (LCA) process.

Bilateral funding alternatives may substitute formal negotiations to an extent, albeit with their own set of potential benefits and challenges and no clear role for the main emissions mitigation work at the heart of the Kyoto Protocol.

The fragmentation of the two track KP/LCA process is compounded by a vast divide between mitigation and adaptation issues. For those of us working in the biodiversity and natural resource sectors, the two main focuses of attention are on adaptation of these sectors to the unavoidable impacts of climate change and on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+).

Both streams of work have made great progress in recent years but also have become a bit narrowly focused in their technical conversations. By and large I don’t see the two groups bridging their substantive issues, even at an abstract international level.

I have REDD+ friends and I have adaptation friends, and if the groups mix, it’s generally just for beers and perhaps light discussion of common challenges outside their technical substantive areas (e.g. climate finance or the overall negotiation process).

If the difficulties in coordinating work across the separate ‘silos’ of various multilateral environmental agreements can teach us anything, it might be to begin the integration process as early as possible. If nothing else is clear by now, it is that finances and time will be extremely tight to implement the climate projects and programmes desperately needed, and comprehensive strategic planning including adaptation, mitigation and protected areas considerations will be at a premium.

Although those of us following environmental issues in the climate negotiations have long laundry lists of issues we hope to see solved, my main wish is probably just for the UNFCCC process to live through Cancun to fight another day.

But these new informal groups have also resulted in a fragmented flurry of quasi-negotiations, which can make it difficult to follow even one major topic in any substantive detail.

This fragmentation can make it all the more difficult for the smallest, least-developed countries lacking adequate capacity and often only a few delegates each per negotiation round to participate substantively in negotiations.

Even if negotiations seem stalled for the foreseeable future, I think it will be vital for climate negotiations to continue to offer a relevant, balanced platform for all parties under the UNFCCC umbrella.